Research : Music Magazines
The music magazine 'The New Musical Express' is an old magazine and the genre that was consisted throughout this is...
There are many different music magazines that are available for purchase.
Front covers of some of these music magazines are posted below.
Some music magazines cover a wide range of musical genres whilst others are genre specific and focus only on one genre, e.g. one magazine focussing on rock music.
The first music magazine cover is of New Musical Express(NME). This is a magazine which covers a range of musical genres and is targeted at people who have a keen interest in different styles of music. It is largely associated with rock, alternative and indie music but associates with several other genres.
Q Magazine is a high quality music magazine which also covers a range of genres. This tends to feature artists who are either already established or likely to become successful. Aside from the range of genres it features, Q covers pop/rock music, mostly from the present with a few features about older artists.
Music magazine 'Uncut' features old albums and a range of different genres but Its music features tend to focus on genres such as Americana, rock and alternative country. some artists that are featured in Uncut are PJ Harvey and Kings of leon.
Revolver magazine specifically favours hard rock and heavy metal music lovers, it rarely shows other genres but there are some indie here and there. Revolver mainly contains artists such Marilyn Manson, Stone Sour and Lamb God.
Kerrang magazine offers a specific range of music which is mainly hard rock and a new wave of British heavy metal. Artists that are included in this music magazine are David Grohl and Linkin Park.
MixMag, a London published magazine, features a wide range of music is more concentrated to dance and club culture music. Electronic music is also heavily featured in this music magazine containing artists such as Kaytranada and Jamie xx.
Motorhead magazine feutres a range or rock n roll type music, they specifically focus more on the heavy metal side of rock and have contributing artists such as Billy Morrison and Steve Stevens. This is one of the less popular music magazines for rock.
Maverick magazine is all about country and and the southern area of America music, a quality and well known music magazine covering mainly the country genre. Some artists featured in this magazine are Shania Twain and Darius Rucker.
Blues Magazine specifically favours all music in the genre of blues. Not a very popular music magazine compared to one like mixmag but caters to blues fans. The types of artists featured in this magazine are Willie Dixon.
Doing research as to which magazine would be most suitable for out choice of song artist ,we came up with the magazine 'We Love Pop' This magazine covers a range of pop music and markets itself as follows:
"We Love Pop is a monthly mag for pop loving teenagers, or anyone with very good tastes in magazines.
We have the best free gifts, the funniest interviews, the coolest fashion, ten gorgeous posters each time, a different celebrity agony aunt every issue and loads more general pop amazingness that you won’t find anywhere else."
Before planning our own advertisement for Lunchmoney Lewis' album, we carried out some research into existing music magazine adevrtisements for other pop albums.
Beyonce's advertisement uses the image used on the album cover so that people will recognise this in store. it uses an interesting and sexy image to get across the feel of the album. as beyonce is a well known artist her name is in bold and white letters so that is stands out but is not a highlighted part of the advert as the target market for the CD will already be aware from the picture. the release date of the CD is in large bold white lettering against a black background, this brings the focus mainly to the writting, as beyonce already has a massive fan base, the release date is the most important part of the advert as people will make sure to take note of this. the album cover uses simple colours in order to maintian the focus on the release date of the album.
This advert for Katy Perry's first album "One Of The Boys" includes a photograph of her which covers the page. The album cover shown on the right also uses photos in a similar location, making the connection between the two. The photograph on the advert shows her in a domestic garden setting including a paddling pool and rubber ducks, this represents Katy Perry as a quirky and fun person which is then reflects in her music and music videos. The fonts used for her name are the same in both the album cover and the advertisement. All other text is in white so that the important information stands out against the background. It includes her first number one song advertised on the front (the unique selling point for the album) so the audience can make a connection between her album and the song. By having the date it is released, buyers will know when it will be available, enabling them to take note for future reference.
Madonna's advertisment also features the picture used for her album cover so that is is easily recognised. the picture has been edited so that is high high saturation so that the colours stand out and is made up of smaller images of her inside a larger image. these are images frmo all different stages of Madonna's career and is vibrant and interesting, which catches peoples attention. there are then white strippes at the bottom with black writting saying important information such as the release date and what it contains, putting it on to a white backgrounds makes the writting stand out and easier to read but it does not take the focus away from the image and the large bold name at the top which is done in the same style. it is simple and to the point but is also interesting to look at.
This advert for Gwen Stefani's Album is typical of a magazine advert for an album since it includes many of the conventions that are often used. The main focus is the photograph in the centre of the advert. Her name shows the sophistication of the album as it is in large gold lettering, but is simplified as it is surrounded by similar colouring. The text below the artist name is the album name followed by two of her most popular songs on the album (highlighting its selling point). The background of the image has been manipulated in order to make the overall appearance more interesting rather then Gwen just posing on a throne, it also help to maintain the focus on the woman and not the overall picture. This also enhances the abstract appearance, this again pulls together the advert and album. It also contains a smaller photograph of her album in the left hand corner, the similarity of image use and colour helps to make the connection and get the album artwork available to the audience so that they will recognise more easily in shops. By including the "Target" logo, it displays the availability of outlets that the audience can buy the album from.
Planning Own MMA
Similar to the CDD we would have to have sketch up or idea of the Music Magazine Ad so we knew what we were going for, Sam would then draw for us a rough sketch of what we will be aiming for in the actual MMA, the image of the drawing is below.
Practice Photography
To receive further practise with the camera I decided to take a few more of photos of Sam in in the preferred lighting we chose when taking the digipack pictures. This further helped my confidence with the camera, it also gave us an opportunity to decipher a couple of the images to use for our MMA. For evidence of the photography, here are all the photos that were taken for the MMA.
Construction Screenshots
Unlike our CDD we knew exactly what we were going for our MMA, the image that was chosen to be used for MMA is below. This image was chosen it was bright, playful and looked well portrait.
To start off the MMA I would create a blank A4 sheet to work with.
After I had a blank page to work on, I would inset the image that was agreed to be used.
I would make it fit the page leaving any white spaces and moving it so that the jeans were not in shot, after this I placed the image onto the work space.
After I had placed, I would ask for feedback to see what they think and what ideas my classmates had in mind.
After taking the audience feedback of increasing the image size to only leave the left side as Sam's was leaning left and it looked cleaner and more professional when enlarged.
After I was happy with the placement of the main image for the MMA I began to add the text, I started with the artist name using the same font as the CDD.
I then created a rectangle as a background for the album name and other information.
I realised in the CDD I had kept the artist name in higher case, with this in mind I would then change it on the MMA too. For the rectangle I changed it to a dark grey so that the bright pink text would be easy to read. I had also added margins in place so that I can keep in mind that the important things should be within the lines.
With the margins in place, I moved the artist text into a more appropriate place.
After I had added the artist title, I would move onto adding the other text needed, beginning with the album name.
I would then resize and make it centre of the grey rectangle.
After seeing the text on top of the grey rectangle I realised that it should be a bit darker as it stood out too much but with the dark grey it blends better with the jumper of Sam.
After this I would then add logos onto the grey bar.
After seeing how all the logos looked on the MMA I realised they were unnecessary as conventional MMA's did not include logos.
Moving the album name into the middle I was more pleased with it looking more like a modern MMA. I would then continue to remove all the logos.
After removing the logos from the MMA I would add a feature line, a quote from Q magazine as well as a website link in small print in the very bottom right of the Magazine. With this added I was happy and finished with how the MMA had turned out, although minimalistic, I was pleased with the result.
Finished MMA
